“You know, you almost dropped me in Belghazi’s suite,” I said.

She shrugged. “I had surprise on my side. I don’t think you were expecting much from a naked woman.”

“Maybe not. But you used what you had at your disposal, and you used it well. Who trained you?”

The question was straightforward, and I knew she wouldn’t take it as another attempt to glean something revealing.

She looked at me for a long moment, then said, “It’s Krav Maga.”

Krav Maga is the self-defense system developed by the Israeli Defense Forces. These days it’s taught all over the world, so experience in the system certainly doesn’t mean the practitioner is Israeli. But Delilah already knew that I suspected her nationality and her affiliations. In this context, her acknowledgment served also as a tacit admission.

I wondered how best to pursue the slight opening she seemed to have deliberately created. I said, “I like Krav Maga. It’s practical.”

“It’s all in how it’s taught,” she said, nodding. “And how you train. Most martial arts are taught as religions. They’re about faith, not facts.”

I smiled. “People need to believe something, even if they have to invent it.”

She nodded again. “Even if it’s wrong. But we don’t have that luxury. We need something that works.”

We. She was getting ready to tell me something.

But don’t push it. Let her get to it the way she wants to.

“How’d they train you?” I asked.

“You know how. A lot of scenario-based conditioning. A lot of contact. My nose was broken during training, can you see it? I had it fixed, but you can still see the scars if you look closely.”

I looked, and saw a hairline mark at the bridge, the remnants of a bad break repaired by a good plastic surgeon. It wouldn’t have meant anything if you hadn’t known to look for it.

“Sounds pretty rough,” I said.

“It was. They took it further for me than for most because my missions are special. I’m alone in the field for a long time, usually without access to a weapon, or at least not to a traditional weapon.”

We were silent again. She took a sip of the Laphroaig and asked, “And you?”

“Mostly judo,” I said. “The Kodokan.” If she’d trained in Krav Maga, she would know both.

She looked at me. “I thought neck cranks were illegal in judo.”

“They are,” I said, seeing that I’d been right about her knowledge. “I learn the special stuff elsewhere. Books and videos. I used to practice it with a couple partners who shared some of my interests.”

“What else?” she asked. “The way I saw you move, you don’t learn that doing judo as a sport. Even with the extra books and videos.”

“No. You don’t. It helps to have spent a decade or so in combat. You develop a certain attitude.”

Silence again. Then she said, “So you are who I think you are.”

I shrugged. “I think you know part of it, yes.”

“Well, you know part about me, too.”

There it is, then. “You’re Israeli,” I said. “Mossad.”

She looked away and cocked her head slightly as though considering what I had said, meditating on it. Then she said, “What difference does it make who I am, who I’m with? From your perspective, none.”

She wasn’t going to tell me, I’d been wrong about that. Or maybe she already had told me, in her own oblique way, and I’d missed it. I wasn’t sure.

She took a sip of the Laphroaig and went on. “But from my perspective, your affiliations matter a great deal. The information we were able to put together on you suggested that you work for the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. But I don’t see what interest the LDP could have in Belghazi. So I assume that, at least this time, you’re being paid by the Americans. And that concerns me.”

“Why?”

She waved her hands outward, palms to the ceiling, as if to say, Isn’t it obvious? “They’re big and factionalized,” she said, “so they’re not discreet. You have to be careful with them. You never know quite who you’re dealing with.”

“How do you mean?”

Now she put her hands on her hips, leaned back on the couch, and dropped her shoulders. The gesture read, Is he just playing dumb, or is this the genuine article? She started talking a moment later, so I figured she had decided it was #2. It shouldn’t have bothered me-on the contrary, in fact-but it did, a little. I assuaged my pride by reminding myself that it’s generally good to be underestimated.

“Did they explain to you why they want Belghazi removed?” she asked.

“They did.”

“Did you believe them?”

I shrugged. “I was barely listening.”

She laughed. “They must have told you about his arms networks, though, terrorists, fundamentalist group connections, blah, blah, blah.”

The disparaging idiom, rendered in her accented English, surprised me, and I laughed. “What, were they making it up?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. It’s all true. And I’m sure that some parts of the U.S. government are upset over it, and might even be trying to do something about it. Some parts.”

“Meaning?”

She smiled and said, “You know, you haven’t even told me your name.”

I looked at her and said, “Call me John.”

“John, then,” she said, as though testing the sound of it.

“You were saying, ‘Some parts.’ ”

She shrugged. “Let’s just say that America is a very big place. It has a lot of competing interests. Not all of them might think Belghazi is such a bad guy.”

“Meaning?” I said again.

“Have you thought about why they want you to be ‘circumspect’ about the way you go about this particular assignment?”

“I have a general idea.”

“Well, consider this.” She leaned forward and brought her hands up, her fingers slightly splayed and her palms forward, as though framing a photograph. “Whatever faction hired you, they’re being oblique. They need deniability. Who do they need deniability from? And have you considered the position this puts you in?”

The relatively marked body language was new. I was seeing a different part of her personality, maybe a part that she ordinarily kept hidden. Interesting.

I thought for a moment. “The same position I’m always in, I would say.”

“Qualitatively, maybe,” she said, waving a hand, palm down, perhaps unconsciously erasing my point. “Quantitatively, the situation might be worse. Who do you think sent the man in the elevator?”

I paused, thinking, I half thought it was you. Instead I said, “I don’t know.”

The wave stopped and she stabbed the air with her index finger. “Correct. Any number of players could now be trying to counter you. Anyone who stands to benefit from what Belghazi does.”

Or who wants to keep him alive long enough to get access to his computer, I thought. I wondered if she was telling me all this to throw me off her scent. Or maybe she was trying to emphasize the hopelessness of my situation, to encourage me to quit. Maybe.

“I’ve always known that being in this business was a poor way to win a popularity contest,” I said.

She laughed. I picked up the bottle and refreshed first her glass, then mine.

I liked her laugh. It was an odd collection of incongruities: husky, but also sweet; womanly, in the sophistication that informed it, but somehow also girlish in its delighted timbre; spiced with a hint of irony, but one that seemed grounded more in a sense of the absurd than in sarcasm or cruelty. I smiled, feeling good, and realized I was getting a little buzzed from the whiskey.

She leaned back and took a sip, pausing with the glass under her nose. I liked that, liked that she appreciated the aroma. I did the same.

“The one thing you do know,” she said, “is that someone is on to you. Do you understand what that means for me? Someone could make the connection. And I don’t operate the way you do. I don’t have the luxury of being able to hide. To do what I need to do, I need to be close, and stay close.”